Do you know if your company is bounded to provide a financial guarantee to cover possible environmental damage?

Fundación CIRCE can help you in the preparation of the Environmental Risk Analysis so that you know if you are obliged to constitute a financial guarantee.

As from October 2021, a financial guarantee will be required for activities classified as priority 3 to cover possible environmental damage.

Law 26/2007 on Environmental Responsibility, which transposed Directive 2004/35/EC, meant the implementation of a new administrative system of environmental responsibility derived from the European Community framework on the prevention of damage and the “polluter pays” principle.

From that moment on, companies in the European Union are faced with more demanding environmental legislation aimed at ensuring that measures are adopted to prevent and avoid undesirable effects on the environment; and that, in the event that such effects occur, the activity causing the damage bears the economic cost of the measures that need to be adopted to repair them.

Therefore, one of the most significant issues of this regulation (and all that has been developed subsequently on this matter), is that all activities contemplated in Annex III of Law 26/2007 are required to have a financial guarantee that allows them to deal with any incident associated with their activity that involves damage to the environment.

Specifically, affected activities shall perform an environmental risk analysis (ERA) of each facility, and shall be done in accordance with Rule 150.008:2008 or similar.

Although the analysis of environmental risks is cited in the Regulation as a necessary tool for calculating the financial guarantee and it could be interpreted that this is its only objective, the reality is that its true purpose is preventive and should serve to analyse and evaluate the environmental risks of an activity, and establish the bases for its effective management, facilitating decision-making in this area in order to reduce it.

The novelty is that the last order, published last October, establishes the obligation to provide a financial guarantee for the activities of Annex III of Law 26/2007 before 2021, for which an Environmental Risk Analysis must be prepared beforehand. For facilities for intensive poultry or pig breeding activities, this requirement is extended for a further year.

If you are one of the companies affected by the Environmental Responsibility Law, do not hesitate to contact us (mperez@fcirce.es), our technical team will advise you and guide you in everything you need to adapt to all their requirements.